Modern contactless cards, so called smart cards, or also mobile devices suitable for NFC (near field communication), e.g. mobile phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants) comprising a contactless subsystem supporting card emulation can emulate several contactless applications. Such a contactless application per se represents a “virtual” contactless card, this virtual contactless card, however, being externally visible as a “physical card” only for the duration of a contactless transaction so as to be able to be compatible with existing contactless reader infrastructures (legacy systems).
The “legacy systems” installed on a worldwide basis in conventional technology do not support the concept of “virtual cards”. The term “anti-collision” is known from conventional technology and relates to selecting a physical card from among a plurality of physical cards which are simultaneously presented to a contactless reader. An unambiguous selection and activation of an adequate virtual card without any intervention in existing infrastructures and while complying with existing standards, i.e. on all physical and logical layers of the contactless protocols, is not provided within a protocol in the context of conventional technology. A selection of such applications may be effected via different HF communication technologies (HF=high frequency), such as ISO 14443 Type A, Type B, ISO 18092, or ISO 15693, etc.
Conventional Technology further knows a selection procedure of an application within the same communication technology, or within the same protocol, by means of differentiation within a global application identifier (AID=application identifier) as is described in ISO 7816-5.
In addition, it is possible to select from applications within the same HF communication technology by different protocols for handling the card, such as an ISO 14443-4 application toward propriety schemes such as Mifare or My-D, all using HF communication technology ISO 14443-3 Type A, but differing with regard to the encoding of the commands.
A selection procedure by means of information from external devices, such as identification of the target application from context information which was communicated, for example, by a mobile phone via RFID (radio frequency identification), Bluetooth, etc., is feasible, in principle, in so far as the means for receiving for processing the context information exist. However, conventional technology offers no method able to differentiate an application within the same communication technology, such as ISO 14443 Type A, on the basis of the same protocols and without modifying same. Administration of several virtual cards is thus not possible, or is possible only with clearly increased complexity at the infrastructure level so as to enable the conventional methods.